The Spirit of Terrorism

Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the symbolism of slaughter—not merely the reality of death but in a sacrifice that challenges the whole system. Where previously the old revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle between real forces in the context of ideology and politics the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge which when combined with high-tech resources constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated and vulnerable West. This new edition is up-dated with the essays “Hypotheses on Terrorism” and “Violence of the Global.”